Thoughts to Start March(ing)

OK, maybe I have been living under a rock for the past decade, albeit a rock with a mortgage. Is that why I have never heard the term “jargon monoxide”?

Jargon monoxide perfectly sums up the cause of the death wobble that I go into when someone drops multiple cliches and buzzwords into the same sentence during an interview. My eyes roll back in my head… slump forward… I start to drool.

As an interviewer, I am incredibly allergic to jargon monoxide, so much so that it puts me into an instant stupor.

For more on the topic… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8VpR8NwOoQ
I am starting to think that love and work and joy are all part of the same virtuous circle.
It is never too late to tell someone that you love them, and that you are grateful for what they have done for you.

I am so sorry that I missed the chance to tell Dave Pritchett, the former head coach at Davidson College, that I loved him, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity he gave me.

I had initially tried out for the Davidson College Wildcat basketball team but did not make the cut. When a member of the team decided he was transferring, just before Thanksgiving, Coach Pritchett asked me to join the team to take the vacant spot.

I myself was within one week of leaving Davidson College forever; I had made the decision that I was going to transfer to a Division III school where I could play hoops immediately.

Two years later, I was averaging 21 minutes a game, coming off the bench for the Wildcats, playing against the likes of Duke, Indiana, Notre Dame, NC State, Wake Forest, New Mexico, and Baylor.

Last weekend, when former Wildcat assistant coach Johnathan Rhyne told me that Coach Pritchett had died two months ago, I was overcome by guilt.

I never took the time to tell Coach how grateful I was, that he took a chance on a scrawny kid from Lynchburg, Virginia whose ambitions far exceeded his talents.

Until now.

Coach, I remember vividly when Davidson College hired you as Head Basketball Coach in the spring of 1976. You were known as “Pitstop” Pritchett, a master recruiter who had signed some of the greatest players ever to play for Lefty Driesell at the University of Maryland. You recruited Terrapin greats such as Brad Davis, Tom McMillen, and Len Elmore, and you achieved legend status when you signed Moses Malone to play at Maryland. That Moses opted instead to jump straight from Petersburg High School to the professional ranks only burnished your reputation that much more.

But as you are well aware, the same “fire in the belly” that led you to be one of the top college basketball coaches and recruiters in the country came at severe physical and emotional cost to you. For health reasons, you resigned as our Head Coach midway through the 1977-78 Davidson basketball season.

I never saw you again.

I can only imagine the pick-up games being played in heaven right now… You and Lefty Driesell and Lefty’s Davidson assistant coach, Terry Holland, all happy, all healthy, and all smiles as you bark instructions to Moses Malone, Mike Maloy, and Lenny Bias.

With all due respect, there was one saying you used frequently at the end of games that was patently incorrect.

We would be down 10 points, and there would be less than 30 seconds left in the game, and you would call a time-out.

“HEY!” you shouted in the huddle, “COME ON, KEEP HUSTLING, WE GOT A LIFETIME ON THE CLOCK!!”

Damn it, Coach, none of us have a lifetime on the clock, and I let time expire without telling you the other expression that you used to console us after a loss.

We would be in the locker room after another crushing defeat in a season where we lost 22 games and won only 5.

You would look at us and smile and say:

”Hey Wildcats… I love you like you’re one of my own kids!”

Coach – I feel the same way now.

Thank You!